Taking Other People's Property

A friend told me her son will never take her political advice again because she got him to vote for Laura Miller, and he now thinks Laura Miller lost the Cowboys to Arlington. I went into a meltdown because her son is a very smart, very decent young man. If someone like him could be indifferent to an entire neighborhood being wiped out so that Arkansas freak could have cheap land to build his ego-stadium, it doesn't bode well for our future.

How did we get to this point in Texas where only the rich and powerful are guaranteed continued ownership of their land?

Jack Pierce is probably a pretty wealthy guy himself because his company is very successful. In Jim Schutze's article this week The Good Laura, he quotes Jack Pierce as saying:

To political junkies like us, it sounds impossible for someone not to recognize Laura Miller's name. Mr. Pierce may have been exaggerating, but not by much. It's a pretty sad day when a businessman has to spend as much time developing relationships with politicians as he does running his business and taking care of his employees and customers. Laura only has a few more weeks in office, so Mr. Pierce can't count on her as his guardian angel in the future. He now must know he will have to pay more attention to the evil doings at City Hall out of self-preservation.

The Good Laura
By Jim Schutze, 5/31/07

...And even worse in my book: While Pierce is standing there at the microphone looking up at the mighty councilpersons with his life and his family's business in his hand, Councilman Ed Oakley, one of two candidates for mayor in the June 16 runoff election, launches into this big, sleazy package of lies aimed at pushing him into giving up.

Talking in his trademark incomprehensible used-car-salesman-on-crank cadence, Oakley says to Pierce: "Let me just ask you hypothetically if you were to go through this process and the process and the staff would allow you to have your area that allowed the use that you have there today which is a manufacturing facility and in addition to that it was created into a p.d. or sub-district that allowed for the other uses such as mixed-use or whatever the neighborhood would determine but you were allowed to be legal and conforming but along with that some of the obnoxious uses that maybe the neighborhood would be fearful of such as a recycling plant or something would be left out of that and would allow you to continue the family business in perpetuity which would be legal which would be a given zoning which would allow you to use that specific use but then the additional uses would allow for residential or mixed-use development or office or retail which aren't allowed there today which actually gives you more land-use rights than what you would have today giving up some of the things that would be obnoxious would you be amenable to sitting down having that conversation?" ...

Do you think Bill Blaydes or Ed Oakley would try to rezone land owned by a mover and shaker connected to the Crow Family or the Miller Family or the Perot Family or the Hunts? Not likely! Mr. Pierce now can understand how Dave Capps of Capps Van & Car Rental felt when Ross, Jr. and Tommy Hicks and all the folks at City Hall went after his business to fund their place of business (the arena). Dave Capps was sitting out on Carpenter Freeway INSIDE the city limits, running his very successful business, paying wages to lots of employees, paying property taxes to the City of Dallas and generating lots of sales tax for us to spend on city services. Folks at City Hall showed their appreciation by slapping a tax on his industry that would only benefit a couple of billionaire sports team owners.

Dave Capps and Jack Pierce are good guys, rich good guys, but good guys. They don't ask for public subsidies, tax abatements, etc. They just run successful businesses that actually sell products and services that people want and need. No one has to give up their property rights so Capps and Pierce can operate their businesses. Neither of them coerced a public official to force another property owner to sell their land to them cheaply. Two good Texans!

Returning to the conversation with my friend, the Cowboys going to Arlington and wiping out an entire neighborhood with hundreds of homeowners forced out of their home will never be a good thing. The end does not justify the means.

People who lost their homes were not paid commercial value for their property. Very few of them got enough for their house and land to buy a new home because it was a very modest-income community. Hardworking people who didn't have the time or the resources to smooze and bribe Arlington council members had their homes and family histories stolen from them. Some of the taken homes would not even qualify as "tract houses", but they were their homes. So, because many of the evicted families were Hispanic and other ethnicities of modest income, their property rights were non-existent. My friend and her son are Hispanic. She lives in an older neighborhood that has become very high dollar.

Ironically, another Hispanic friend who lives up here in Northwest Dallas is concerned about her home becoming unaffordable due to increased taxes from a higher appraisal from those menacing McMansions moving northwest from East Dallas and other areas. There are several new houses just north of my neighborhood, and all are the two-story, stone-faced "McMansion" variety. I like them, but then they are not near enough to my street to make much difference in my home's appraisal. She and I both are big property rights types, but she is beginning to think other peoples' right to develop their property as they want may interfere with her right to continue owning and/or affording to own her home.

Guess I'm a purist on the issue. To me, so long as you build a single-family home on a single-family lot in a single-family zoned neighborhood, you have a right to build the house you want. I love the ranch style homes of the Marsh/Walnut Hill neighborhoods. Some are substantial, some are little more than cottages. Very few look alike, but all have a comfortable feel. The new houses don't really fit in, but neither do some existing homes that have had second floors added to meet the needs and wants of the families living in them. Wish my house had a second story, too.

Several very nice homes in my neighborhood are being ruined by current occupants who are using our single-family homes as multi-family apartment buildings. They park 6-9 or more trucks, vans, SUV's at a single residence. Nobody at City Hall seems to care. They are devaluing my property. My next door neighbor is selling his house because he's going to John Hopkins to do his internship. It's a nice house, but his realtor is advising he offer it a low price due to the obvious problems with the three bad houses up the street. That's good and bad for me. Good, because I can challenge any increase in the valuation of my house by the Appraisal District. Bad, because someone who really can't afford the cost of maintaining a house might "qualify" as a purchaser and then get as creative as the folks up the street about making ends meet.

This is an end around to what should be sacrosanct in Texas -- your property rights. Like everything else, your rights (property and personal) end where mine begin. You can't do just anything with your property when you live in a city with zoning laws. You can't operate a car repair business in a residential neighborhood and not expect City Hall to come down on you. You can operate a car repair business in an area properly zoned for that use. Unless the government is taking your land to build a road, a bridge, a jail, a school, etc., no one should be able to take your land or business.

Another irony in all this Pierce/Hollywood Doors vs. Blaydes & Oakley drama is that Ed Oakley is oopposed to displacing some of those used furniture stores and run down warehouses on Industrial by using that as the relief corridor he claims is so needed that we should put a toll road right down the Trinity. He should us one business on Industrial Blvd. with the history, success or respect of Hollywood Overhead Doors.

Early voting starts on Monday, June 4th for the mayoral runoff. When you go to the polls, don't think about party labels. Think about who has already tried to take one man's land because a rich fat cat wanted to redevelop it.

Ed claims he didn't ask or want the Democrat Party's endorsement, but he sent out mailers in the general election identifying himself as a Democrat and two of his opponents as Republicans. His flyer also distinguished between North Dallas candidates and South Dallas candidates, telling South Dallas voters they shouldn't vote for anyone from North Dallas. Surprising for Ed, a whole bunch of folk in the "Southern Sector" voted for Tom Leppert and other North Dallas candidates anyway. It will happen again in the runoff election.

I could be wrong, but Tom Leppert doesn't seem like the kind of guy who would uproot a successful Dallas business. At last week's council meeting his opponent showed us that he would.

This voter cares about property rights. Do you?

sb